It is most difficult on a large snow surface to say whether it is flat.  Certainly there are plenty of big crevasses for several miles in this neighbourhood, though they are generally well covered, and we found only very small ones on this outward journey.  I am inclined to think there are also some considerable pressure waves.  As we came up to Camp 5 we floundered into a pocket of soft snow in which one pony after another plunged deeper and deeper until they were buried up to their bellies and could move no more.  I suppose it was an old crevasse filled with soft snow, or perhaps one of the pressure-ridge hollows which had been recently drifted up.  My own pony somehow got through with his sledge to the other side, and every moment I expected the ground to fall below us and a chasm to swallow us up.  The others had to be unharnessed and led out.  The only set of snow-shoes was then put on to Bowers’ big pony and he went back and drew the stranded sledges out.  Beyond we pitched our camp.

On February 3-4 we marched for ten miles to Camp 6.  In the last five miles we crossed several crevasses, our first; and I heard Oates ask some one what they looked like.  “Black as hell,” he said, but we saw no more just now, for this march carried us beyond the line of pressure which runs between White Island and Cape Crozier.  This halt was called Corner Camp, as we turned here and marched due south.  Corner Camp will be heard of again and again in this story:  it is thirty miles from Hut Point.

By 4 P.M. it was blowing our first Barrier blizzard.  We were to find out afterwards that a Corner Camp blizzard blows nearly as often as a Hut Point wind.  The Bluff seems to be the breeding-place for these disturbances, which pour out towards the sea by way of Cape Crozier.  Corner Camp is in the direct line between the two.

One summer blizzard is much like another.  The temperature, never very low, rises, and you are not cold in the tent.  Sometimes a blizzard is a very welcome rest:  after weeks of hard pulling, dragging yourself awake each morning, feeling as though you had only just gone to sleep, with the mental strain perhaps which work among crevasses entails, it is most pleasant to be put to bed for two or three days.  You may sleep dreamlessly nearly all the time, rousing out for meals, or waking occasionally to hear from the soft warmth of your reindeer bag the deep boom of the tent flapping in the wind, or drowsily you may visit other parts of the world, while the drifting snow purrs against the green tent at your head.

But outside there is raging chaos.  It is blowing a full gale:  the air is full of falling snow, and the wind drives this along and adds to it the loose snow which is lying on the surface of the Barrier.  Fight your way a few steps away from the tent, and it will be gone.  Lose your sense of direction and there is nothing to guide you back.  Expose your face and hands to the wind, and they will very soon be frost-bitten.  And this at midsummer.  Imagine the added cold of spring and autumn:  the cold and darkness of winter.